“There were good and bad sides, but there were a lot of wounds in my childhood that still affect me now. It was with the father… He was very violent. Verbally and physically. I have three brothers and three sisters who have all suffered the same thing. I think I can say that it followed me my whole life. But I’m only starting to work on this now.

I’m lucky to be retired early, so it certainly helped me to begin this process. For now I’m doing art-therapy. It’s an expression of what we have inside through artistic creations. Drawings, paintings, collages, things like that. It’s the medium that allows to express things that are buried. It’s been almost one year, it’s quite a slow process, but it helps me. First to be able to accept the anger: seeing it, identifying it, recognising it and accepting it. Ideally there is no more anger, but that’s not possible. The work is really to examine this, to lay it out and to be able to live with it. Because so far, I’ve been hiding this, I’ve been pushing it back very far, but actually it’s still clearly there. This work enables you to bring it out a little and to really see it… maybe to tame it. I’m still not sure how to express all this. I’m very happy to have found this person, she suits me well.

One regret is not to have started this work on myself earlier. Because I think it still had… it didn’t make relationships with others easier. Small friendships there is no problem, but closer than that… it didn’t work out… because of my childhood. Feeling secure, and being within love, if we can attain this I think we can live better.”

(Pont des Bergues | translated from French)